1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to the field of multifunctional input/output devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there are widely popular television programs/radio programs that announce the contents of messages/postcards which have been received beforehand from viewers/listeners. Due to the pervasiveness of the Internet in recent years, viewers and listeners are starting to send messages via websites on the Internet and e-mails instead of sending letters and postcards by mail. A viewer/listener can access a website of a television/radio program from his/her terminal connected via the Internet, to request music or post messages such as feedback and opinions on the program. Accordingly, more messages are being received, thus making television/radio programs more exciting.
The following is an outline of operations performed by television/radio stations to process such messages received from viewers/listeners via the Internet. FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a flow from when a listener posts a message to the radio program until the message is announced. A listener 101 of a radio program listens to the radio program with a radio terminal 102 and finds out the e-mail address for sending messages. Then, the listener 101 sends a message from a mobile phone 103 or a personal computer 104. The message can be sent with an e-mail client or with a message form in the website of the program. The e-mail message is sent through the Internet and arrives at a mail server 105 to which the e-mail account of the program belongs. A staff member 106 of the program (assistant etc. of the program) uses a personal computer 107 installed with e-mail client software to acquire the e-mail message from the mail server, and prints out the e-mail message with a printer 108. The staff member 106 decides whether to announce the message and make additions/corrections according to need. Then, the printed message is handed to the host of the radio program as a manuscript. This is a typical workflow for receiving the contents of a message by e-mail, printing out the message on a paper medium, and delivering the message to the host.
Patent document 1 discloses a system for performing operations from receiving an e-mail message to printing out the message with the use of an image processing device installed with a general-purpose OS and an e-mail client. This system analyzes the header of the received e-mail, and automatically prints out the body of the e-mail that has been received by the mail server, from the starting time to the ending time of the broadcast program. Additionally, there is a function for preventing the image processing device from printing out an e-mail that has been determined as spam mail by the mail server and e-mail messages that have been repeatedly received from the same source address. Accordingly, the human user does not need to perform the task of discriminating such e-mails.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2004-356822
However, with the invention disclosed in patent document 1, in order to return a thank-you note by reply mail to the listener whose message has been announced in the program, the human user needs to recognize the name and the e-mail address of the viewer/listener from the paper printout, and input the return address in a separate personal computer. Additionally, as to spam control, when an e-mail includes inappropriate contents, and the television/radio station desires to prohibit any subsequent e-mail messages from the corresponding e-mail address, determinations made by the mail server may be inadequate for taking flexible measures. Specifically, in order to prevent unwanted junk mail, the human user needs to manually operate the image processing device to add such e-mail addresses to a junk mail list.